Ex-customs Chief Faces Charge

January 23, 1986|By Jim Leusner, The Orlando Sentinel

The former head of the U.S. Customs Service patrol office at Port Canaveral has been charged with participating in a smuggling ring that imported 165 pounds of cocaine into Florida in late 1982, federal drug agents said.

Authorities arrested Scott McKenney, 32, of Merritt Island, in a motor home at a Brevard County shopping center Friday night because they feared he was preparing to flee, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Mike Wong testified Tuesday.

An affidavit Wong filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court charges that DEA agents in Orlando learned from an informant during the two-year probe that McKenney ``organized and managed`` the importing of the cocaine into the United States on Nov. 4, 1982. McKenney left the agency in early 1982.

``He was using his U.S. Customs (Service) knowledge of interdiction of narcotics to benefit his own enterprise,`` said Felix Jimenez, head of the DEA office in Altamonte Springs.

Jimenez said the cocaine was worth $3 million to $12 million.

U.S. Magistrate Donald Dietrich in Orlando ordered McKenney held without bail at the Seminole County jail. Dietrich gave prosecutors three days to prepare evidence to show at a detention hearing why McKenney should not be released on bail.

``The client has read the complaint and he says it`s not true,`` said McKenney`s attorney, Richard Rhodes of Orlando. He would not allow McKenney to be interviewed.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Garry Stegeland told the magistrate that the case against McKenney would be presented to a federal grand jury this week. He and Jimenez would not elaborate on the investigation.

The arrest of McKenney is the second implicating wrongdoing among customs agents at Port Canaveral.

The affidavit accuses McKenney of attending meetings in Brevard County to discuss the smuggling operation and of providing police radio frequencies to help drug pilots avoid detection by authorities, but it is unclear when those alleged activities took place.